I am deciding to make the switch from PC to Mac. I custom build the desktop I have, and have an HP computer. The Desktop has most everything from both the laptop and the desktop on its HD. I have an external harddrive, but its only 250GB. How would Ya'll suggest i store all my data which is roughly 500GB while I switch Computers. My plan was to sell the laptop to fund the purchase of the Macbook Pro I want. Then sell the Desktop, but I have a fear that I'll lose all my data between selling the laptop and getting the Mac to transfer the data too from the desktop.

Agree that an external HD is the way to go for storage. Partition it when you format it so that you can use SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner to boot your computer if your internal HD has a problem. You can use the same external HD for the Apple archiving software "Time Machine".

Make sure you look at the June 2012 models. They have USB3 which is 10x faster than USB2. They also have the proprietary Thunderbolt port which is 2x faster than the USB3. Make sure your external HD will work with these ports.

Also, look at the Apple Refurbished list for better prices and the same warranty. Keep in mind that the Retina Display models cannot be upgraded but the non-Retina Display models can be and take up to 16GB of memory, available from Crucial for about $100.

I'm just curious why you are switching to Mac? I ask because I have many computers (8 at my house, 4 at my business location), and by saying you are switching, it sounds like you intend to completely abandon Windows, which you may regret down the line.

My background is that I am a website dev. I use Windows, Mac, and Linux every day. Up until about 4 years ago I was using Windows exclusively, and bought the Mac mainly for display rendering for cross browser compatibility.

So, when I bought my Mac, I already had a bunch of Linux experience, which helped because I was pretty comfortable with the terminal. The downside (at the time) was that there was jack for free programs that I take for granted because I had been using Windows. Free programs like Notepad++ had no equivalent on Mac even when I tried buying one or two. Free server stacks like XAMPP and WAMP have Mac alternatives, but they suck, which was still more or less true when I checked a couple months ago. I could go on if you make me, but I think you get the point, I just wasn't really happy with the Mac. I couldn't switch. That doesn't mean I was going to throw the thing away, because I do use it for testing, but to me it was a hyped up product that didn't really deliver. Plus, all the BS about Macs not crashing is just plain wrong. I'd never really experienced any problems with my Windows computers, but the Mac is really a POS. Again, just my opinion.

I run tomcat, httpd, eclipse, a java portal, and mysql daily on my macbook.

It's not better or worse than what you would otherwise have on linux, its just a little bit of a pain in the *** to reconfigure user permissions to have everything setup to run like you would naturally get on a fresh linux deployment.

Only thing thus far im bitter about is lack of a good free subversion client. Versions was the best one I found (compatible with subversion 1.6.x+ ) and its a few bucks. I demand zero cost satisfaction

You'll be happy with the change after the relearning curve which isn't that difficult in any case. Over the years I've had everything you can imagine both hardware and software wise and for me my numerous Macs just work when I need them.

As a matter of fact there was a comparison done a bit back that showed feature for feature the cost was not higher compared to a similar featured pc. That was a bit of a surprise as well since most people always use that as an arguement against.

I agree with this from experience. I also agree with Skunk about keeping the PC around just in case.

But if you must sell: Before selling a computer, I always keep the hard drive and place it in a enclosure in case I need to refer back to it. Cloning software is good, but having originals of anything is always a plus. Buy a cheap, used HDD to replace the one inside the laptop.

If the laptop isn't worth the trouble of replacing the hard drive or isn't worth a lot on money, consider keeping it and find something else to sell or a cheaper computer to buy.

Consider this; I just built a computer for my Mom. Nothing too fancy, but Gigabyte mobo, i3 processor, 1TB HDD, and 8GB RAM. Spent about $600.00 in hardware. O/S is under $100 for Windows 7 (I hate Windows 8), or could have used Ubuntu for free, but why can't I buy OSX Mountain Lion? Because it's BS is why. If I could buy the Mac O/S separately I'd be way more likely to turn fanboy. What are they scared of?

It's an issue of support. If Apple started selling Mac OS X for use for "compatible" non-Apple hardware, they would open the door for a support nightmare because they'd now have to deal with support cases for OS X on non-Apple hardware; hardware they don't have any control of. Of course, Apple could decide to say, "We only provide phone/email/retail support for OS X on Apple hardware", but then they would have to deal with public/media backlash. If they end up deciding to provide support for OS X on non-Apple hardware, then they would have to increase support overhead (more employees, more training) which would result in an increased cost of the OS (which existing Mac users would balk at). Seriously, I consider OS X "free" since the cost of the OS is pretty much subsidized by the cost of the hardware.

Of course, there's the 'hackintosh' community where there is a knowledge base of hardware that is compatible with OS X and the workarounds necessary to get OS X on non-Apple machines. I thought about doing this myself. But then you have to worry about OS X not working on that machine whenever Apple releases an OS X update (because it often breaks functionality of OS X on 'hackintosh' boxes). This directly ties into the previous issue of 'support' in that Apple is able to maximize stability of their OS because they focus on it working on specific hardware and don't have to concern themselves about all of the other supposedly 'compatible' hardware out there, which is fundamentally what makes Windows so unstable. Windows itself is a stable OS. The 'instability' is introduced by the hardware drivers and runtime libraries introduced to the OS after the fact.

I've always stated that I was a long time Windows user. Every month back in my college days, all my Comp Sci buddies and I would hit the computer show and buy new hardware to upgrade our rigs and LAN party every weekend. I was heavy into Linux at the time as well (and later to FreeBSD when I became more server administrator oriented).

Then when OS X v10.1 came along, I realized it offered the best of Windows and Linux: a great windowing GUI on Unix core (I still don't like any of the windowing systems on Linux) with all the major enterprise and commercial software packages (Photoshop, Office, etc).

I understand that hardware cost is far better for Wintel vs Mac. But I still find that OS X is still the best OS for all things I do:

I had a PC at work that I needed to replace. I picked up a Western Digital 750 gig portable hard drive at Costco two years ago for about $90 and downloaded everything off of the PC that I needed. When I got my new PC at work, I was able to access the files from the WD hard drive without any problems.

I have a 2011 Macbook Pro at home running OS 10.6.8 and Parallels running Windows XP. When I plug the WD into the Mac, it asks if I want to run it as a Mac or PC. I run Microsoft Office on both the Mac and my work PC, although the work PC has a newer version. No problems opening and saving files from one machine to the other.

I would think about running Parallels on the MacBook just in case. You will need a licensed version of a Windows OS to make it run and the software. If you've got all of the original software it shouldn't be a problem. I had to buy a Windows OS because I didn't have an OS disk for my work PC.

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Randy
NRA Life Member

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." Abraham Lincoln

I have heard of plenty of people that wanted to go to Mac, but most of them couldn't find decent software to do basic PC software functions (Quicken and proprietary job-specific software), so they ended up running Win in a VM, and buying the Windows software anyways. This may not be your case...

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"That's what governments are for - get in a man's way." - Captain Malcolm 'Mal' Reynolds

Zero Cost Satisfaction! It doesn't happen on a Mac. I will say though, now that I can get a decent text editor (Sublime Text 2), the Mac has way more potential than it used to, although ST2 is not free.

Consider this; I just built a computer for my Mom. Nothing too fancy, but Gigabyte mobo, i3 processor, 1TB HDD, and 8GB RAM. Spent about $600.00 in hardware. O/S is under $100 for Windows 7 (I hate Windows 8), or could have used Ubuntu for free, but why can't I buy OSX Mountain Lion? Because it's BS is why. If I could buy the Mac O/S separately I'd be way more likely to turn fanboy. What are they scared of? Oh, that they might have to be compatible with a bunch of hardware? Apple insists their computers are the Shight compared to Windows, but it's like comparing apples and oranges (no pun intended).

Huh yeah you know I never looked into buying "just the OS" - then again, full disclosure : I'm not freelance / self ran studio. I'm a desk monkey and desk monkeys don't pay out of pocket for work software/hardware. I opt'd for a Mac last round of equipment replacements mostly for a change of scenery if nothing else. Also the Lightning ports aren't compatible with our meeting room projectors so I totally get out of screen sharing in meetings

I run PC @ home where costs are an issue (Vista 64 for gaming bc im a sadist that pays for his own OSs, Ubuntu (k) for once a week skills tuner i force upon myself) - for work, i figured id give a macbook a shot. No complaints yet really

I have heard of plenty of people that wanted to go to Mac, but most of them couldn't find decent software to do basic PC software functions (Quicken and proprietary job-specific software), so they ended up running Win in a VM, and buying the Windows software anyways. This may not be your case...

Sadly, this is the case with Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection client. The OS X version is garbage. Quite a few of us OS X users on my group use XP in a VirtualBox VM just for RDC. The Citrix Receiver client for OS X (which I use sometimes for accessing VCenter) is also very finicky when it comes to 10.7's "Spaces" / Virtual Desktops and being jailed to a specific Desktop.

Sadly, this is the case with Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection client. The OS X version is garbage. Quite a few of us OS X users on my group use XP in a VirtualBox VM just for RDC. The Citrix Receiver client for OS X (which I use sometimes for accessing VCenter) is also very finicky when it comes to 10.7's "Spaces" / Virtual Desktops and being jailed to a specific Desktop.

silly. I just used it for the first time on this past thursday to connect to a vmWare partition over a remote vpn (pptp) connection and it worked flawlessly

so @ocabj = maybe try native alternatives if possible in lieu of the citrix solution. The "mac specific jre" is my only real complaint but its largely complete and flexible - old dogs just need to learn new tricks

I have heard of plenty of people that wanted to go to Mac, but most of them couldn't find decent software to do basic PC software functions (Quicken and proprietary job-specific software), so they ended up running Win in a VM, and buying the Windows software anyways. This may not be your case...

From what I can tell : This is "XCode's" fault.

Let me be 100% clear : Microsoft has an amazing IDE. Amazing.

The syntax is retarded, their servers are full of idiot lights and who really even needs "gadgets" ? Their IDE is hands down....

FABULOUS !!!!!!!

With that comes journeymen studios making really useful applications easily and fast.

I hate XCode so bad UNLESS its ObjectiveC.

Thank god im a java man. Eclipse looks just as miserable on a mac as it does on a PC ( )

Macs arent for everyone. But, for the average user they are a better way to go. Apple's service is top notch, assuming you live close to a retail store. They offer a one-year training program for $99, which includes unlimited training as well as a data transfer from your old computer to your new mac (as long as you buy your mac from apple). This program can only be purchased when you buy your computer though.

Can you run any distros of Linux Natively on a mac, like you can on standard PC hardware?

I don't think I would ever run on hardware that I was limited to only one native OS, especially if the machine cost was more than 1.5-2 PCs WITH an OS each that could run Linux natively as a storage box when it was done being the main rig...

Most macs I have seen as just as good a a low-end dell, or hp with no place to add 3 drives if you wanted to run kernel-based raid of some sort... Repurpose and reutilization of cases and other hardware is a big factor for me, as I am a cheap bastage, as child-care costs are a beach...

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"That's what governments are for - get in a man's way." - Captain Malcolm 'Mal' Reynolds